Your All-time Favourite F1 Cars

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The philosophy behind Formula One is painfully simple. Build the fastest and most reliable car within a set of guidelines. The pursuit of this philosophy has driven engineers mad for 63 years and counting, and fortunately for Formula One devotees, we so often see an end product that is incredibly beautiful yet menacingly fast.

We’re under a week away from the 2013 British Grand Prix Grand Prix, currently hosted at the Silverstone Circuit in Northamptonshire. It remains one of the most demanding tracks in modern motorsport, featuring an assortment of painfully slow hairpins integrated amongst frighteningly fast sweepers. It is, and has been, the ultimate test for a Formula One car since the first Grand Prix of the modern era in 1950. The cream rises to the top at the Northamptonshire based circuit, and a machine that wins here is so often at the pointy end of the manufacturers standings. There’s no better time to ask our much appreciated #YourRD contributors:

“What is your all-time favourite Formula One car and why”?

Manolis Sigoulakis - Speed and physics addict

Many of you must have picked the McLaren-Honda MP4-4, but I won't. Not because I don't like it, but because I want to discuss a combination of success and beauty. That's why I pick the Ferrari F2004. A fast car - or better the fastest F1 car in history. It was a beautiful car, with beautiful curves and colour. It also had a fantastic sound that might never come back. It was a truly fantastic car all around, with the V10 engine, the most successful man in F1, Rubens Michael Schumacher and 2 easy championships. Just the statistics of the car are amazing. 15 wins, 12 poles, it reached 365.4 kilometres per hour and it will always have a place in our hearts.

Chris Stacey/Tophercheese- Aspiring doer of things

I'm sure there will be many people suckling at the mighty teat of nostalgia on this one, however, not me. My favourite Formula One car is the Mclaren MP4-27 (No I didn't start watching Formula 1 yesterday), because of its combination of sheer beauty and speed. Every contour was a work of art and passion, and because it was made by Mclaren, everything was beautifully designed to make the car efficient and quick. It was the fastest car all season, setting pole position 8 times, and winning 7 races (however it should have one many more, but due to reliability it didn't work out). Its Achilles heel however, was the reliability, and some argue (including me), that it lost Lewis the title, but I still love it.

Call me crazy, and you might just be right. My all-time favourite F1 car is the Tyrell P34. I’ll do my best to explain why the P34 ranks so highly in my estimations, but ideally I’d have an additional 20,000 words. Everything about this car is completely wrong, and yet I absolutely adore it. Why on earth does it have six wheels? Well, in a nutshell, having four wheels at the front of the car increased the “contact patch” of the front tyres. We always want more rubber touching the road, right? It worked pretty well for Tyrell in the 1976 Swedish Grand Prix, where Scheckter and Depailler took a one-two finish. Unfortunately, the added weight of the front suspension and improperly developed front-tyres bought the project to an end. Jody Scheckter described the P34 as a “piece of junk”. I beg to differ Jody, but then again, I never drove it!

There have been some incredible Formula One cars throughout the sport’s history, and we can only hope that the best are yet to come. An honourable mention must also go to the McLaren MP4/4, which won all but one race in the 1988 season. The Ferrari 312T also deserves to be discussed, as it achieved the most wins of any car in history, although it was regularly updated over its 5 year life. In terms of sheer beauty, the general consensus on a highly subjective topic is that the Jordan 191 (pictured at the top of the article) is the most stunning car to ever grace the Formula One scene, and thus a mention is also justified!

Thank you for your contributions everyone! For details regarding how to contribute to YourRaceDepartment, please visit the details thread. Stay tuned for the announcement of our next topic here!